The largest increases in per capita income for metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) within the United States have occurred primarily within the Western, Mountain and Great Lakes states, according to data recently released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Nearly every MSA experienced greater income levels in 2018 when compared to their 10-year average.

As the world begins to emerge from the “Great Lockdown” and governments increasingly turn their efforts towards reopening economies, many will look to past recessions for lessons on recovery. This edition of Useful Stats examines the rate of real GDP recovery by state following the recessions of 2001 and 2008.

This edition of Useful Stats examines — by state and over the period from 2000 to 2018 — how many new establishments were founded, how many jobs these new establishments created, how many establishments closed, and how many jobs were lost from those closing establishments. In only one year, the last year of the period, 2018, all states experienced positive net gains in employment and establishments, based on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As shown in the interactive map below, the states that had the greatest number of new establishments in 2018 were California (63,073), Florida (31,063), Texas (28,079), Washington (20,525), and New York (13,967). The states that experienced the greatest net employment numbers in 2018 were California (177,061), Florida (117,746), Texas (115,624), Washington (45,394), and New York (44,045).

Although changes in gross domestic product (GDP) give us an idea of how economies are changing, this measure fails to tell the full story. This edition of Useful Stats examines county-level GDP-per-capita, the measure of economic output for each resident in an area. What we see is strongly skewed data with high 2018 GDP-per-capita levels and high 10-year growth rates concentrated primarily in low population-high output counties. We also see that rural populations have declined over the period while metropolitan areas have grown, yet the median GDP-per-capita growth rates between the groups are essentially the same.

Building on SSTI’s recent analysis of county-level GDP by industry, this edition moves beyond a single year and examines the changes in real — adjusted for inflation — county GDP and the changes in industry-specific contributions to county GDP for the 10-year period from 2009 to 2018. As shown in the interactive map below, the total 10-year growth rate for counties averaged approximately 21 percent.

PitchBook and NVCA’s Venture Monitor for 2019 largely depicts continued trends from 2018: $100 million-plus investments, $2 million-plus average for angel and seed deals, and more than 10,000 investments of more than $100 billion. In a few cases, 2019 data suggests average deal sizes may have peaked in 2018, but more time is needed to clarify the trend.

Taking a deeper dive into R&D expenditures at U.S. institutions of higher education, this week’s edition of Useful Stats examines the fields in which this R&D was performed at the metropolitan level in 2018. Expanding on a previous SSTI report showing that R&D activity at universities and colleges is clustered heavily on the coasts, this analysis uses the NSF’s Higher Education R&D (HERD) data on the research expenditures at individual institutions to determine how this funding is distributed among the various fields of study, with life sciences outpacing all other fields.

As shown in the map below, HERD expenditures in the life sciences(primarily the biological, biomedical, and health sciences) accounted for the vast majority of all higher education R&D activity in the U.S. — accounting for 57.8 percent ($45.8 billion) of the total performed in 2018. Engineering R&D was a distant second, accounting for 15.6 of the total.

This edition of Useful Stats examines the Bureau of Economic Analysis’ first full release of county-level gross domestic product (GDP) data. Specifically, this analysis considers total county GDP in 2018 and the contributions to each county’s GDP by industry.

While finance and insurance in New York ($222.5 billion) accounted for the single largest contribution to both total county GDP and total U.S. GDP in 2018 — followed by real estate and rental and leasing in Los Angeles ($150.2 billion) — the manufacturing sector was the highest contributor to county GDP in the greatest number of counties. Manufacturing was the primary source for county GDP in 927 out of more than 3100 counties — accounting for nearly $2.3 trillion of total U.S. GDP in 2018. Government and government enterprises (768 counties) accounted for the second most frequent leader in county GDP contributions — totaling $2.4 trillion nationally — followed by real estate and rental and leasing (647 counties) — totaling $2.7 trillion nationally. The next closest industry was agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting which was the top contributor to GDP in only 209 counties — and only accounting for a national total of $138.4 billion.

The map below shows counties with manufacturing, government, real estate, mining, and agriculture as their predominant industry. The map shows that manufacturing is the leading industry in counties in the Midwest and South while agriculture is centered primarily within the Plains region.

This week’s edition of Useful Stats covers Higher Education Research & Development (HERD) expenditures at the metropolitan level, pulling from the recent NSF updates to its HERD performance data. High levels of college and university R&D activity is not surprisingly clustered heavily in the East Coast — ranging from the District of Columbia up to Boston — and on the West Coast in California. The 10-year average HERD expenditures were the greatest in the New York-Northern New Jersey metro area ($3.7 billion), Boston ($2.8 billion), Baltimore ($2.8 billion), Los Angeles ($2.6 billion), and Houston ($2.0 billion). These five metro areas account for nearly 21 percent of the nation’s total 10-year average R&D spending by universities and colleges. Of the 209 metro areas included in this analysis — and excluding nonmetropolitan areas — the top 15 metros account for approximately 45 percent of the 10-year average of total HERD expenditures.

Across the U.S., the federal government provided 53 percent of R&D funding at institutions of higher education in FY 2018. Those institutions provided 26 percent of the funding themselves, and most of the remainder was provided by a mix of nonprofit organizations (7 percent), industry (6 percent), and state and local government (5 percent). The specific contributions varied from state to state, however, with some relying more on specific relationships to support R&D within the state.

Expenditures in higher education R&D (HERD) grew in FY 2018, increasing by $4.1 billion over FY 2017, the largest year-over-year increase since FY 2010-2011 according to an SSTI analysis of recently released data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics. For the 10-year period from FY 2009 to FY 2018, HERD grew by 38.4 percent nationally, representing an increase of nearly $22 billion.

From 2006 to 2018, income inequality has risen continuously both nationwide and in all states (but not in the District of Columbia). Annual changes vary widely for state income inequality, with some states experiencing increases year after year, and others displaying more volatile trends consisting of both sharp annual decreases and increases.

While rankings and annual indices are catnip for some looking to gain attention for their latest rankings, SSTI has always argued that it’s long-term trends that give the best sense of where a state or region stands. With recent release of income data, SSTI has examined the last 34 years data in median household income for each state. SSTI found that while median household income — adjusted to 2018 dollars — has risen in nearly every state and the U.S. since 1984 with an average annual rate of increase of 0.8 percent, the growth, not surprisingly, varies widely among individual states.

Business R&D activity has been historically concentrated in a few states and became even more so in 2017, according to a National Science Foundation issue brief on the latest Business Research & Development and Innovation Survey (BRDIS).

For years, there have been arguments back and forth on which companies are the greatest job creators. The argument began with advocates for small businesses saying that small businesses were the engine of job creation. In recent years, others have argued that it’s not the size of the business that’s significant so much as the age of the business and that it’s young businesses that create most of the jobs.

Home to the Research Triangle Park and top-tier research universities like Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Durham-Chapel Hill metropolitan area led all regions in per capita NIH funding in FY 2018 and placed sixth in total funding that year, according to a new analysis by SSTI. This edition of Useful Stats looks at all NIH awards at the regional level over the five-year period between FY 2014 and FY 2018. Boston led all regions in total NIH funding in FY 2018, while NIH funding in the Washington, D.C., region increased by the greatest percentage over the five-year period among major metropolitan areas.

As the largest public funder of biomedical research in the world, NIH awards are of particular importance to the technology-based economic development community. Including new data for FY 2017 and FY 2018, this edition of Useful Stats serves as an update to an August 2017 article highlighting NIH awards by state over the past decade. In FY 2018, NIH awarded a total of $28.3 billion in funds to the 50 states and territories. Of the total amount awarded in 2018, slightly less than two thirds (65.3 percent) went to the top 10 states. This share is slightly lower than in 2017 (65.6 percent), the same as in 2014 (65.3 percent) and slightly higher than in 2009 (66.1 percent).

This month, SSTI research has examined changes in total R&D and total R&D intensity for each state over a 15-year period from 2002 to 2016. In this final installment of the series, this article looks at how the performance of R&D in the states changed over time.

How has the intensity of research and development (R&D) performance changed across states and over time? As a follow up to an article in last week’s Digest that examined changes in total R&D expenditures for each state over the 15-year period from 2002 to 2016, this week’s Useful Stats focuses on R&D intensity.

Despite its limitations, publicly available data on research and development (R&D) expenditures remains one of the best metrics for measuring state progress in the innovation economy. Defined as the sum of multiple National Science Foundation (NSF) measures – including business and industry R&D, higher education R&D, and R&D at federally funded centers – total R&D has skyrocketed nationwide over the past 15 years, though some states have experienced an outsized portion of this growth. Where has total R&D performance increased the most over the past 15 years?

Although North Dakota’s per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has declined since 2013, the energy boom in earlier years gave the state the fastest increase over the past 10- and 20-year periods, according to an SSTI analysis of recently updated state GDP data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Beyond North Dakota, the 10 years from 2008 to 2018 benefitted per capita GDP in states with a prominent knowledge economy, led by New York, California, Washington and Massachusetts. In general, per-capita gross product serves as a useful metric because it can show a state’s relative economic performance against its peers and over time. This article examines state GDP per capita over the past 20 years.*

Many regional economic development strategies emphasize employment in manufacturing or high-tech, as these industries tend to provide well-paying jobs. Through an analysis of American Community Survey five-year data for 2013-2017, SSTI assessed state-level employment concentration within these sectors.

Outside of the private sector, colleges and universities perform the vast majority of R&D in the United States – but where do these funds come from? An SSTI analysis of data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF NCSES) finds that, across the country, the federal government was the source of more than half (53.5 percent) of all R&D performed at colleges and universities in 2017. Institutional funds (25.1 percent), nonprofit organizations (6.8 percent), businesses (5.9 percent), state and local governments (5.6 percent), and other sources (3.0 percent) comprised the remaining sources of higher education R&D funding. The interactive chart below shows the breakdown of funding sources for research and development at colleges and universities for each state.

Nearly three-quarters of all research and development was performed by the private sector in fiscal year 2016, though this share differed greatly across the states, according to an SSTI analysis of recently released data from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics (NSF NCSES).

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The State Science & Technology Institute (SSTI) is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to improving initiatives that support prosperity through science, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.